Not above the law

the pueblo chieftain

Published: August 9, 2014;Last modified: April 1, 2015 04:51PM

TWICE IN recent months, members of the Pueblo City Council have broken the Colorado Open Meetings Law.

The first time occurred in May, when the council went into executive session to debate a proposal to redirect a portion of the half-cent sales tax for primary job recruitment. Councilman Chris Nicoll rightly charged at the time that the meetings were illegal because they didn’t meet the exemptions for a closed-door meeting.

The more recent — and more egregious — incident occurred in July, when council President Sandy Daff and members Ami Nawrocki and Chris Kaufman exchanged surreptitious emails with their political advisor, county Transportation Director Greg Severance. He provided Daff, Ami Nawocki and Kaufman with a road map to steamroll over the local trash haulers’ initiative to block the controversial hiring of a $50,000 city trash consultant. Severance called it the “Bazooka Plan.”

The trio of city officials broke the law the instant all three were copied on the email exchange.

This has been our contention since The Pueblo Chieftain exposed the emails last week. It was confirmed on Thursday by two of the state’s leading experts on freedom of the press issues.

“One does not need to affirmatively ‘speak’ in order to be a participant in ‘a meeting at which public business is discussed,’”said Steven Zansberg, the president of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition and a Denver attorney. “When three city council members (either all at one time, or in a series of emails) discuss ‘public business’ without providing notice to the public of the ‘meeting,’ and they also deny the public its right to ‘attend’ and observe that meeting, they are violating the Open Meetings Law. That is absolutely clear.”

The email exchange began legally enough, when Kaufman and Ami Nawrocki discussed with Severance the plan to hire a consultant to study mandatory trash hauling ahead of the November election. Both board members responded to the emails, but copied their responses to Daff.

And that is when the law says a private conversation turned into a public meeting.

To her credit, Daff recognized the violation for what it was and kept mum, saying only, “I typically don’t respond to these group emails.” Kaufman, on the other hand, brushed it off as “a technical mistake.”

Sorry, Mr. Kaufman but, this is more than a mistake.

It’s a violation of the law, of the public trust, and of the foundations of democracy.

The Colorado Open Meetings Law was designed to protect the constituents’ access to the public meetings that shape their community. This allows them to keep tabs on both their elected officials and the progress of the important issues of the day.

When meetings are conducted in secret, there is no public access and — likewise — no leadership accountability. Lack of accountability leads to a lack of trust, which in turn leads to further breakdowns in the process.

And that is bad for all parties involved.

We sincerely hope the trio of council members involved are humbled by and take the lessons of this debacle to heart. The public and the community you represent deserve as much.